scott free Read online

  Scott Free

  Yin Packer

  Carroll & Graf Publishers New York

  BEFORE

  “Look here. Jessica, I’ve made a decision. I’m going ahead with the change.”

  That was how it began, or how it ended, with Scott announcing it at breakfast on a Saturday morning. He didn’t have to go to work, but she did. Southgate Insurance was open until noon. All employees were expected to be present, even a field investigator like Jessica.

  She poured him another cup of coffee. Vassilaros. He never drank any other brand. He had always been the particular one of the pair. Certain things seemed programmed into him, as though he’d come out of the womb set in his ways, from little things to this major one he was about to deal with—he felt an entitlement.

  “Look here,” he’d begun the debacle. Look there? She was always looking there—at him—at handsome, slender, blue-eyed him. There were plenty of men with twenty-nine-inch waists and little hard round buns, tall and muscular. Go to any gym and there they were on treadmills, hanging from bars, lifting weights. Not one with a face like Scott’s. Jessica was fifteen years younger than he was, but even in his forties he was someone women turned around to see a second time, and certain men as well. Scott was this gorgeous hunk who belonged to her, all two hundred and fifty pounds of her.

  At Southgate they called him “Jessica’s jewel.” Popular as she was, as much fun as she was, didn’t they still ask themselves how she’d ever landed him? Like many overweight people Jessica had perfect features, so that a casual observer was bound to picture her thinner, then wonder why she had let herself go. With a husband like Scott House, too. It wasn’t just his looks. He had a PhD from Princeton. He wrote. He taught. His father was the eminent scholar Bolton House. Only Jessica knew, and had always known, the edgy, other side of Scott.

  “Did you hear me, Jessica?”

  He knew she had. He knew she realized just what he was announcing in such a casual-sounding voice. He made it seem as though he could be talking about a change of address, a change of clothes, a job change.

  It was a summer morning, the windows open and the sounds of children playing, their dogs barking as the New Tork Times was tossed to driveways from a car cruising down Frost Lane. In their little enclave, near the water in Bay Shore, New York, all the streets were named for popular, predictable poets: Frost Lane, Longfellow Lane.

  “I heard you,” she said.

  There was a book of poems beside his plate. Not a popular, predictable one but Frank O’Hara. There was the Larry Rivers drawing of O’Hara on the cover. He was naked except for a pair of combat boots, his long penis hanging down above them.

  Scott read all the time: at the table, on the toilet, in the tub, and even right before the announcement of the end of their world.

  “Well?” Scott said.

  “So you’re finally going to do it to yourself? To me and Emma?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “No, I’m not. Not for myself. But I’m sorry for you and Emmy. I’ll move out if you want me to.”

  “You know I don’t.”

  “I’ll have to eventually.”

  “When do you plan to begin?”

  “I’ve already begun.”

  “Oh. Just like that.”

  “You knew it was coming.”

  “I never really believed you’d go ahead, Scott.”

  “I have no choice.”

  “No choice,” she said bitterly.

  “Let’s not start, Jess.”

  “If it was another woman, if it was anything but what it is, I could talk with someone about it. Somebody who’d been through it with her husband, or her boyfriend, or brother.”

  “There’s a support group called—”

  She cut him off. “I don’t want to join a group!”

  He shrugged. “Then suit yourself.”

  “This isn’t fair to Emmy.”

  “What wouldn’t be fair to Emmy would be for me to live a lie.”

  “I have an idea she’d choose that over this if she was old enough to understand.”

  In the living room Emma House was watching a cartoon on TV. Jessica realized it was the last time they would appear to be the typical normal family, mother and father having a second cup of coffee, their baby in the next room giggling at a dancing duck on television.

  Then Jessica would drive to work, walk into the office the way Auden described how suffering took place while someone else was eating or opening a window: she would return phone calls and answer e-mail with trembling hands, knowing that the day would come when she’d have to tell them at Southgate.

  “I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” she said. “I don’t know where to begin, Scott, who to tell, how to explain it.”

  “You don’t have to think about that yet. It’ll take time.”

  “And meanwhile?”

  “Meanwhile we’ll carry on as usual, if that’s agreeable to you.”

  “I don’t know what else to do,” she said.

  “There is something else. Don’t call me Scott anymore.”

  “What do I call you?”

  “It won’t be hard, Jess. No radical name change,” he said. “But please start trying to think of me as female. Call me Scotti.”

  ONE

  Scotti seldom wore pants anymore. That hot August morning she was in a knee-length pleated skirt, a white silk blouse, and gold chain, her long blond hair held back with a pink scarf. Her face had the same dichoto-mous quality Princess Di’s used to have, or Streisand’s: sometimes striking, other times almost homely. She still walked in a somewhat ungainly, striding manner. Her voice was modulated to a pleasant low tone, not as deep now. She had worked on that, hard. She was still surprised when she saw her reflection, but satisfied with how she had changed in three and a half years.

  By noon the tables under the blue-and-white VIP tents at the Hampton Classic were filled. A smiling man with thick black hair, sporting a white linen blazer, dark pants, and a white cap, was wheeled into the Lasher Communications tent.

  “That’s Len Lasher, CEO of Lasher Communications,” Scotti said, “and that’s Sea Love’s owner with him.”

  “The redhead?” Jessica asked.

  “No. I think the redhead is an employee of Lasher’s. Our man is behind them.”

  “Don’t call him ‘our man,’ please. I hate him!”

  “So do I, Jessica. Hate his guts.”

  They were talking about Edward Candle.

  Scotti House had been investigating Candle all spring. Jessica had spent April and May at a spa, losing weight in earnest for the first time in her life, never mind her mother-in-law’s crack that it was too little, too late. She was down forty' pounds, out of caftans and into silk pantsuits.

  Until this scorching end-of-summer morning at the horse show, Jessica had never seen Candle.

  He was in his fifties, although he looked younger, balding slightly, over six foot, and lean. He had a kindly face, belying all that Scotti and Jessica knew about him. He looked gentle and intelligent, like someone who very well might have named his two show jumpers after a pair of poems by Charlotte Mew: Sea Love and the late Farmer’s Bride.

  There was a racing horse named after a Mew poem, too: Arracombe Wood, who had been killed in the same way as Farmer’s Bride.

  No one had told Scotti the horses were named after poems, but she knew Mew’s work well. What other explanation was there for those three names, from a rather obscure poet’s work?

  Candle’s game was to collect the insurance on horses that couldn’t measure up. He didn’t do the job himself. The man who did it for him, Scotti had learned, lived nearby in Montauk.

  This was the annual presentatio
n of the Hampton Classic, and both Scotti and Jessica had the fear it would be the last time Sea Love would jump anywhere.

  It cost Candle about $75,000 a year to keep Sea Love. The rumor among equestrians up and down the East Coast was that the chestnut mare had performed badly again all summer. The horse had no wish to relinquish her autonomy, no malleability. She never had, for the three years Candle had owned her.

  Edward Candle was a weekend guest of Len Lasher’s at Le Reve, Lasher’s home on The Highway Behind The Pond. The local newspapers reported that Candle would soon have his own home in East Hampton after years of visiting there summers.

  “Why is this Lasher in a wheelchair?” Jessica asked Scotti.

  “He has multiple sclerosis.”

  As Jessica watched Candle fuss over him, pour champagne for him, grin down at him, and pat his back, she said, “Too bad MS isn’t catching.”

  Jessica House was a full-time invesdgator for Southgate Insurance. She had hired Scotti part-time after Scotti moved from Bay Shore to East Hampton and worked some days at the library. Scotti was not a trained investigator, but propinquity, her innate curiosity, and Jessica’s conviction that Scotti could nail Candle had prompted her to make her ex an assistant. The fatal “accident” Farmer’s Bride had in Montauk had cost Southgate $300,000. Five years before that, another insurance agency had paid out $250,000 when Arracombee Wood died.

  Now Sea Love was being kept at the same farm that had housed Arra-combe Wood.

  Scotti’s contact was somewhere in the crowd. He was a groom named Fultz. Jessica hoped she could thank him personally. He had given Scotti enough evidence to convict Candle. Jessica had already turned it over to the police.

  It had cost Southgate plenty to pay off Fultz and get the goods on Candle and his hired horse killer. But it would save Southgate a good deal more. Sea Love was insured for $350,000.

  Before Scotti had located Fultz, she had spent hours with riders, grooms, and stable workers, current and past, from Hang Hollow Farm.

  Jessica didn’t want to wait to see Candle’s photographs in the newspapers, or shots of him dodging reporters when the police began closing in on him. She wanted to get a good look at the creep when he was off guard, socializing with his fancy friends: people like the Lashers.

  “I haven’t thought of Charlotte Mew in years,” Scotti said as they strolled around the grounds near the LCI tent. “Remember the first time I read her to you? We were in a sailboat off Fire Island. I read you ‘Farmer’s Bride.’ Do you remember it?”

  “I never had your knack for remembering and memorizing poetry,” Jessica said.

  “‘She sleeps up in the attic there / Alone, poor maid. ’Tis but a stair / Betwixt us. Oh! my God! the down / The soft young down of her, the brown, / The brown of her—her eyes, her hair, her hair!’”

  “Now I remember,” Jessica said. “See if you can remember what you said after you read that poem to me.”

  “Nope. I can’t.”

  “You said that Charlotte Mew drank a bottle of Lysol and killed herself.”

  “Well, she did.” Scotti laughed. There was nothing any amount of hormones could do about that laugh. Her voice coach would wince, throw her hands up, and cry, “Sotto, Scotti! Sotto!”

  Scotti looked at her watch. “Ten to one. I was hoping we could see the children ride. The lead line class starts at two. The Lasher party will go down for that. The little girl rides in it. Lasher will probably go with them.”

  “How old is the child?”

  “Three years younger than Emma. Six,” Scotti said.

  That could have been Jessica’s cue to say something about their daughter, but she didn’t. She had a perverse streak in her. All the years Scott had begged her to try getting off some weight (for her health, never mind the rest) she had waited until the divorce to book herself at the spa. Now that Emma refused to see Scotti or talk with her on the phone, Jessica hardly ever mentioned their daughter. Scotti had to ask for information, always, which she finally did.

  “How is Emma doing?”

  “She hasn’t changed her mind about not wanting to see you.”

  “I don’t mean that. I mean how is she?”

  “Okay. She wants a cat. I can’t breathe with a cat. I promised her fish.”

  “Fish? Why not a dog?”

  “Who’s going to walk it? I have enough to do as it is.”

  “Can’t a dog hang out in the yard?”

  “Who’s going to fence it in?”

  “I can do that.”

  “You’ll break your fingernails.”

  “That’s one,” Scotti warned.

  “I couldn’t resist it.”

  “You never can, Jess.” '

  “I didn’t mean anything.”

  “You never do.”

  It was then, just as things were getting sticky between them, that a short, slight man tapped Scotti on the shoulder.

  “Have you heard anything, Ms. House?”

  Jessica thought he was talking to her.

  Scotti said, “Hello, Fultz.”

  He was in blue jeans and a T-shirt, with a ponytail tied with a piece of rope behind his head. He was shaking his head, grimacing as he ignored Jessica and spoke directly to Scotti. “Sea Love is dead, ma’am. It was done last night.”

  “No!”

  “Electrocution,” said Fultz. “I thought you should know.”

  Then he was gone, lost in the crowd.

  At that moment the Lashers left their tent. The hawk-faced redhead was pushing Lasher in the wheelchair. Candle walked beside the chair, laughing at something Len Lasher had called up to him. Jessica got a good look at Edward Candle, proving what she had come to know working for Southgate: they never looked sinister.

  TWO

  Nell Slack liked to hear about the Lashers. In a cold November rain she was in Mario Rome’s van and he was taking her to LaGuardia to catch an early evening flight. He’d chauffeured her to and from the airport five or six times, and he had explained that the Lashers took precedence. That was his agreement with them.

  She was the kind of woman Mario Rome wished he had valued when he was younger, instead of the drinkers and dopers who had patronized The Magic C, a bar he’d owned in New York’s East Seventies. Even though he loved full, long hair and she had the cut of a waif, she had the cheekbones, eyes, mouth, and kindly manner of a lady, and no matter how foolish the idea might be, he was immensely attracted to her.

  “Are you driving for the Lashers tomorrow night, or can you meet my flight?” she asked him.

  “I’ll be there,” he said. “I don’t drive the Lashers much at night now, unless Delroy needs me.”

  “That’s a new name.”

  “He’s like a traffic manager at Le Reve. A gofer, really, but he keeps track of everybody, or he used to, back when Mr. Lasher traveled a lot. Delroy Davenport. He looks like some kind of jungle parrot with his bright red hair, this big nose, and eyes so brown you’d swear they were black. Now he runs the house, or he thinks he does. We call him Mrs. Danvers.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “She was this character in the old movie Rebecca. Judith Anderson played her. She was a servant in this mansion called Manderly. She was very possessive of the place, and the master.”

  “Is this Delroy effeminate?”

  “No. He’s just possessive of the Lashers and Le Reve. He’s Len Lasher’s main man now. He does everything but—” he let the sentence dangle. He was going to say “but wipe his ass.” But she was such a lady, he couldn’t . . . and anyway now that Mr. Lasher was so ill, Delroy probably did wipe him.

  “Is Mr. Lasher’s MS worse?”

  “It’s got his legs now, I haven’t seen much of him since summer.”

  “Poor man.”

  “That’s one thing he’s not: poor.” Mario laughed. But he felt badly for Len Lasher, too. A big wheeler-dealer like that suddenly crippled. It was sad. . . . Still, he ran Lasher Communications same as always. Even that ve
ry week, Lasher was working on a merger with Standard Broadcasting. Delroy had told Mario the MS only made him sharper: the legs might not work as well anymore, but the mind never stopped.

  “Do you get along with Delroy?” Nell Slack asked.

  “Well enough. He used to be this nerdy kid whose aunt owned Knitwits, a shop in the back of a hardware store in Sag Harbor. When she was sober, she taught knitting there. When she wasn’t, Delroy’d teach it. Ten, eleven years old he could knit scarves, afghans, sweaters. By the time I met him he was busing tables at The American Hotel. They called him ‘Needles.’ His specialty was dog sweaters then.”

  Nell Slack chuckled. Mario liked that soft, happy sound. He liked telling her things. She was a good listener.

  He said, “I remember Delroy when his aunt died and he didn’t have rent money. Then one summer he caddied for Mrs. Lasher, and the next

  thing you knew he was working for them. They moved him into this little farmhouse down the road from Le Reve. Now he’s part of the household.” “Lucky him.”

  “And he used to hate the rich,” Mario said. “One time his aunt delivered four of his dog sweaters to this estate in Georgica. There was a cocktail party in progress. They asked her in and fed her martinis while they dressed their dachshunds in the sweaters. She left there soused and drove into a tree, probably died instantly. Delroy blamed them for her death.”

  “No wonder he hates them.”

  “He’d hang around this place called Dirty Eddy’s on Newtown Lane where the workers all got coffee mornings. He’d try to find out more about the accident, who all was there, how it happened exactly. But nobody wanted to talk to him about it. Nobody’d ever talk to him, anyway. Only I would. I felt sorry for the poor schmuck. When he got with the Lashers and began hiring drivers he’d call me.”

  “You were nice to him, Mario.”

  “He never forgot. When they need a van at Le Reve, I get the job.” “And I bet you meet a lot of fascinating people.”

  “Don’t bet on that, Miss Slack. Mostly I cart their luggage from the Hamptons to the airport and back. And every morning, Monday to Friday, I take their six-year-old daughter to Invictus, this private school he founded for her, so she doesn’t have to mix with the riffraff. Then I pick her and her six little classmates up after school and drop them off... so much for fascinating people.”